Archaic England

CHAPTER VIII
SCOURING THE WHITE HORSE

According to Gaelic mythology Brigit was the daughter of the supreme head of the Irish gods of Day, Life, and Light—whose name Dagda Mor, the authorities translate into Great Good Fire. Some accounts state there were three Brigits, but these three, like the three Gweneveres or Ginevras who were sometimes assigned to King Arthur, are evidently three aspects of the one and only Queen Vera, Queen Ever, or Queen Fair. Brigit’s husband was the celebrated Bress, after whom we are told every fair and beautiful thing in Ireland was entitled a “bress”.

Brigit and Bress were the parents of three gods entitled Brian, Iuchar, and Uar, and it looks as though these three were equivalent to the Persian trinity of Good Thought, Good Deed, and Good Word. The term word is derived by Skeat from a root wer, meaning to speak, whence Uar was seemingly werde or Good Word. Brian, I have already connoted with brain, whence Good Brian was probably equivalent to Good Thought, and Iuchar, the third of Bride’s brats, looks curiously like eu cœur, eu cor, or eu cardia, i.e., soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious heart, otherwise Kind Action or Good Deed.

These three mythic sons constitute the gods of Irish Literature and Art, and are said to have had in common an only son entitled Ecne,[400] whose name, according to De Jubainville, meant “knowledge or poetry”.[401] The legend Cuno which appears so frequently in British coins in connection with Pegasus—the steed of the Muses—or the Hackney, varies into Ecen, vide the examples herewith, and the palm branch or fern leaf constituting the mane points to the probability that the animal portrayed corresponds to “Splendid Mane,” the magic steed of three-legged Mona.

Mona was a headquarters of the British Druids by whom white horses were ceremoniously maintained. Speaking of the peculiar credulity of the German tribes Tacitus observes: “For this purpose a number of milk-white steeds unprophaned by mortal labour are constantly maintained at the public expense and placed to pasture in the religious groves. When occasion requires they are harnessed to a sacred chariot and the priest, accompanied by the king or chief of the state, attends to watch the motions and the neighing of the horses. No other mode of augury is received with such implicit faith by the people, the nobility, and the priesthood. The horses upon these solemn occasions are supposed to be the organs of the gods.”[402]

The horse is said to be exceptionally intelligent,[403] whence presumably why it was elevated into an emblem of Knowing, Kenning, Cunning, and ultimately of the Gnosis. That the Gnostics so regarded it is sufficiently evident apart from the collection of symbolic horses dealt with elsewhere.[404]

The old French for hackney was haquenee, the old Spanish was hacanea, the Italian is chinea, a contracted form of acchinea: jennet or Little Joan is connected with the Spanish ginete which has been connoted with Zenata, the name of a tribe of Barbary celebrated for its cavalry.

That Jeanette was worshipped in Italy sub rosa, would appear from the emblem here illustrated, which is taken from the title page of a work published in 1601.[405] The Hackney, the New-moon (Kenna?) and the Staff or Branch are emblems, which, as already seen, occur persistently on British coins, and the legend Philos ippon in dies crescit reading: “Love of the Horse; in time it will increase,” obviously applied to some philosophy, and not a material taste for stud farms and the turf.

In 1857, during some excavations in Rome in the palace of the Cæsars on the Palatine Hill, an inscription which is described as a “curious scratch on the wall” was brought to light. This so-called graffito blasfemo has been held to be a vile caricature of the crucifixion, some authorities supposing the head to be that of a wild ass, others that of a jackal: beneath is an ill-spelt legend in Greek characters to the effect: “Alexamenos worships his god,” and on the right is a meanly attired figure seemingly engaged in worship.[406]

I am unable to recognise either a jackal or a wild ass in the figure in dispute, which seems in greater likelihood to represent a not ill-executed horse’s head. Nor seemingly is the creature crucified, but on the contrary it is supporting the letter “T,” or Tau, an emblem which was so peculiarly sacred among the Druids that they even topped and trained their sacred oak until it had acquired this holy form.[407] The Tau was the sign mentioned by Ezekiel as being branded upon the foreheads of the Elect, and this “curious scratch” of poor Alexamenos attributed to the very early part of the third century was not, in my humble opinion, the work of some illiterate slave or soldier attached to the palace of the Cæsars, ridiculing the religion of a companion, but more probably the pious work of a Gnostic lover of philosophy: that the Roman church was honeycombed with Gnostic heresies is well known.

The word philosophy is philo sophy or the love of wisdom, but sophi, or wisdom, is radically ophi, or opi, i.e., the Phœnician hipha, Greek hippa, a mare: the name Philip is always understood as phil ip or “love of the horse,” and the hobby horse of British festivals was almost certainly the hippa or the hippo.

Of the 486 varieties of British coins illustrated by Sir John Evans no less than 360 represent a horse in one form or another, whence it is obvious that the hobby horse was once a national emblem of the highest import. In the opinion of this foremost authority all Gaulish and all British coins are contemptible copies of a wondrous Macedonian stater, which circulated at Marseilles, whence the design permeated Gaul and Britain in the form of rude and clownish imitations: this supposed model, the very mark and acme of all other craftsmen, is here illustrated, and the reader can form his own opinion upon its artistic merits. “It appears to me,” says Sir John Evans, “that in most cases the adjuncts found upon the numerous degraded imitations of this type are merely the result of the engraver’s laziness or incompetence, where they are not attributable to his ignorance of what the objects he was copying were originally designed to represent. And although I am willing to recognise a mythological and national element in this adaptation of the Macedonian stater which forms the prototype of the greater part of the ancient British series, it is but rarely that this element can be traced with certainty upon its numerous subsequent modifications.”[408]

The supposed modifications attributed to the laziness or incompetence of British craftsmen are, however, so astonishing and so ably executed that I am convinced the present theory of feeble imitation is ill-founded. The horses of Philippus are comparatively stiff and wooden by the side of the work of Celtic craftsmen who, when that was their intention, animated their creations with amazing verve and elan. Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, who regards our early coins as “deplorable abortions,” laments that one remarkable feature in the whole group of numismatic monuments of British and Celtic extraction is the spirit of servile imitation which it breathes, as well as the absence of that religious sentiment which confers a character on the Greek and Roman coinages.[409] How this writer defines religious sentiment I am unaware, but in any case it is difficult to square his assertion with Akerman’s reference to “the great variety of crosses and other totally uninteresting objects” found on the post-Roman coinage.[410]

We have already noted certain exquisitely modelled coins of Gaul and there are many more yet to be considered. Dr. Jewitt concedes that the imitations were not always servile “having occasionally additional features as drapery, a torque round the neck, a bandlet or what not,” but this writer obsequiously follows Sir John Evans in the opinion that the stater of Philip was “seized on by the barbarians who came in contact with Greek civilisation as an object of imitation. In Gaul this was especially the case, and the whole of the gold coinage of that country may be said to consist of imitations more or less rude and degenerate of the Macedonian Philippus.”[411]

In 1769 a hoard of 371 gold British coins was discovered on the Cornish hill known as Carn Bre, near Cambourne, in view of which (and many other archæological finds) Borlase entertained the notion that Carn Bre was a prehistoric sanctuary. This conclusion is seemingly supported by the near neighbourhood of the town Redruth which is believed to have meant—rhe druth, or “the swift-flowing stream of the Druids”. It is generally supposed that primitive coins were struck by priests within their sacred precincts,[412] and the extraordinary large collection found upon Carn Bre seems a strong implication that at some period coins were there minted. We find seemingly the Bre of Carn Bre, doubtless the Gaulish abri or sanctuary, recurrent in Ireland, where at Bri Leith it was believed that Angus Mac Oge, the ever-young and lovely son of Dagda Mor, had his brugh or bri, which meant fairy palace. The Cornish Cambourne, which the authorities suppose to have been Cam bron, and to have meant crooked hill, was more probably like Carn Bre the seat or abri of King Auberon, “Saint” Bron, or King Aubrey.

The generic term coin is imagined to be derived from cuneum, the Latin accusative of cuneus, a wedge, “perhaps,” adds Skeat, “allied to cone”. It is, however, almost an invariable rule to designate coins by the design found upon their face, whence “angel,” “florin,” “rose,” “crown,” “kreuzer” (cross), and so forth. The British penny is supposed to have derived its title from the head—Celtic pen—stamped upon it:[413] the Italian ducat was so denominated because it bore the image of a duke, whose coins were officially known as ducati, or “coins of the duchy”; and as not only the legend cuin, cuno, etc., appears upon early coinage, but also an image of an angel which we have endeavoured to show was regarded as the Cun or Queen, it seems likely that the word coin (Gaelic cuinn) is as old as the Cuin legend, and may have had no immediate relation either with cunneus or cone. Nevertheless, the Queen of Heaven was occasionally depicted on coins in the form of a cone, as on the token here illustrated: on the coins of Cyprus Venus was represented under the symbolism of a cone-shaped stone.[414] The ancient minters not only customarily portrayed the features of their pherepolis or Fairy of the City, but they occasionally rendered her identity fool-proof by inscribing her name at full length as in the Arethusa coin here illustrated: some of our seventh-century money bears the legend Lux—an allusion to the Light of the World; in the East coins were practically religious manifestos and bore inscriptions such as God is one; God is the Eternal; There is no God but God Alone; May the Most High Perpetuate His Kingdom; and among the coins of Byzantium is an impression of the Virgin bearing the legend O Lady do thou keep in safety.[415]

The early coinage of Genoa represented a gate or janua; the Roman coin of Janus was known as the As, an implication that Janus, the first and most venerable of the Roman pantheon, was radically genus or King As: in the same way it is customary among us to speak colloquially of “George,” or more ceremoniously of “King George,” and in all probability the full and formal title of the Roman As was the Janus. On these coins there figured the prow or forefront of a ship, and the same prow will be noticed on the tokens of Britannia (ante, p. 120). It is remarkable that even 500 years after the coins of Janus had been out of circulation the youth of Rome used to toss money to the exclamation “Heads or Ships”—a very early instance of the pari mutuel!

In connection with archaic coins it is curious that one cannot get away from John or Ion. The first people to strike coins are believed to have been either the Ionians or the Lydians, both of whom inhabited the locality of ancient Troy:[416] as early as the middle of the seventh century B.C., the Ægean island of Ægina, then a great centre of commerce, minted money, but the annalists of China go far further in their claim that as far back as 1091 B.C., a coinage was instituted by Cheng, the second King of Chou.[417] The generic term token is radically Ken, shekel is seemingly allied to Sheik, the Moorish or Berberian for a chief, and with daric, the Persian coin, one may connote not only Touriack but ultimately Troy or Droia. Our guinea was so named after gold from Guinea; Guinea presumably was under Touriack or Berber influences, and we shall consider in a subsequent chapter Ogane, a mighty potentate of northern Africa whose toe, like that of Janus, the visitor most reverently kissed.

The Hackney of our early coinage thus not only appears pre-eminently upon it, but the very terms coin, token, chink, and jingle,[418] are permeated with the same root, i.e., Ecna, Ægina, or Jeanne.

That the worship of the Hackney stretches backward into the remotest depths of antiquity is implied by the carvings of prehistoric horse-heads found notably in the trous or cave shelters of Derbyshire and Dordogne. The discoveries at Torquay in Kent’s Cavern, in Kent’s Copse, (or Kent’s Hole as it is named in ancient maps), included bone, or horn pins, awls, barbed harpoons, and a neatly formed needle precisely similar to analogous objects found in the rock shelters of Dordogne.[419] Many representations of horses and horse-heads have been found among the coloured inscriptions at Font de Gaune—the Fount of Gaune, and likewise at Combarelles: the Combar is here seemingly King Bar, and Bruniquel, another famous site of horse remains, is in all probability connected with the broncho. Perigord, the site of ancient Petrocorii, is radically peri, and Petrocorii, the Father or Rock Heart, may be connoted with Iuchar, the brother of Bryan and the father of Ecna, or philosophy.

In England horse-teeth in association with a flint celt have been found at Wiggonholt in Sussex: the term holt is applied in Cornwall to Pictish souterrains, and it is probable that Wiggonholt was once a holt or hole of eu Igon: Ægeon was an alternative title of Briareus of the Hundred Hands, and as already shown Briareus was localised by Greek writers upon a British islet (ante, p. 82).

The white horse constituted the arms of Brunswick or Burn’s Wick; horses were carved upon the ancient font at Burnsall in Yorkshire, and that the broncho was esteemed in Britain by the flint knappers is implied by the etching of a horse’s head found upon a polished horse rib in a cave at Cresswell Crags in Derbyshire. Ceres or Demeter was represented as a mare, cres is the root of cresco—I grow, and among the white horses carved upon the chalk downs of England, one at Bratton was marked by an exaggerated “crescentic tail”. Bratton, or Bra-ton? Hill, whereon this curious brute was carved, may be connoted with Bradon, and Bratton may also be compared with prad, a word which in horsey circles means a horse, whence prad cove, a dealer in horses: with the white horse at Bratton may be connoted the horse carved upon the downs at Preston near Weymouth. For a mass of miscellaneous and interesting horse-lore the curious reader may refer to Mr. Walter Johnson’s Byways in British Archæology: the opinion of this painstaking and reliable writer is that the famed white horse of Bratton, like its fellow at Uffington, although usually believed to commemorate victories over the Danes are more probably to be referred to the Late Bronze, or Early Iron Age.

It has already been noted that artificially white horses were inscribed at times on Scotch hills, but these earth-monuments are unrecorded either in Ireland or on the Continent. On the higher part of Dartmoor there is a bare patch on the granite plateau in form resembling a horse, but whether the clearing is artificial is uncertain: the probabilities are, however, in favour of design for the site is known as White Horse Hill.[420]

The White Horse of Berkshire—the shire of the horse, Al Borak, or the brok?—is situated at Uffington, a name which the authorities decode into town or village of Uffa: I do not think this imaginary “Uffa” was primarily a Saxon settler, and it is more probable that Uffa was hipha, the Tyrian title of the Great Mother whose name also meant mare, whence the Hellenic hippa. The authorities would like to read Avebury, a form of Abury or Avereberie, as burg of Aeffa, but near Avebury there is a white horse cut upon the slope of a down, and the adjacent place-name Uffcot suggests that here also was an hipha-cot, or cromlech. The ride of Lady Godiva nude upon a white horse was, as we shall see later, probably the survival of an ancient festival representative of Good Hipha, the St. Ive, or St. Eve, who figures here and there in Britain, otherwise Eve, the Mother of All Living.

There used to be traces at Stonehenge of a currus or horse-course, and all the evidence is strongly in favour of the supposition that the horse has been with us in these islands for an exceedingly long time.

When defending their shores against the Roman invaders the British cavalry drove their horses into the sea attacking their enemies while in the water, and one of the facts most impressive to Cæsar was the skill with which our ancestors handled their steeds. Speaking of the British charioteers he says: “First they advance through all parts of their Army, and throw their javelins, and having wound themselves in among the troops of horse, they alight and fight on foot; the charioteers retiring a little with their chariots, but posting themselves in such a manner, that if they see their masters pressed, they may be able to bring them off; by this means the Britons have the agility of horse, and the firmness of foot, and by daily exercise have attained to such skill and management, that in a declivity they can govern the horses, though at full speed, check and turn them short about, run forward upon the pole, stand firm upon the yoke, and then withdraw themselves nimbly into their chariots.”[421]

According to Mr. and Mrs. Hawes, two-wheeled chariots are delineated on Gnossian seals, among which is found a four-wheeled chariot having the front wheels armed with spikes:[422] the Britons are traditionally supposed to have attached scythes to their wheels, and Homer’s description of a chariot fight might well have expressed the sensations of the British Jehu:—